Josef Lehner : Talented artist, Nazi Soldier, but above all - just a boy
We are given a hardened and sinister image that we apply to all soldiers of the Third Reich, a vision no less uniformed than their individuality consumed within the massive sea of faces. The chilling fact is, that not one German was a born killer - it was result of conditioning - something that in fact even we are not immune to. We also often neglect to realize that so many acted purely on the fear instilled within them, people spoken up too late, when no one was left to make the opposition significant, when the masses for war outnumbered those for peace. The masses for hate. There were even Jews among the ranks who feared for the lives of their families that did what they had to survive, a horror of reality. Imagine the choice - toyed by propaganda or simply caught in the tides of your nation turned against you it seemed there was no way out - that you must follow orders - killing the friends, and loves of your prior life, or be outed and killed taking your closest and family with you. It was a choice of blood- the will to survive. Would you rather kill or have to tell your children why they must die? Perhaps be forced to take their lives. This was a choice made my hundreds, thousends pehaps. Young boys too were forced into service. Children's innocent gullability pirated by none other than the propagandist pen. The reality is no better spoken than by the forever silent face of Josef Lhener, an artist alike the man he was named for, in wartime a young mind he was fighting for all he knew as right. Condemned to act by the insatiable want that lives within us all, a pride in his heritage and service to his nation. So sickeningly contorted, eerily conditioned by the art of propaganda. Words, and nothing more, transformed his masses - into humans nonetheless - but at loss for humanity. Josef was an artist, and above all just a boy. He had a dream to follow in his famlily name's legacy of art. He was killed in action in 1944, as seen on his death card below the painting. The gold paint re touched in the 1940's on the frame perhaps made of the teeth pried from prisoners, perhaps too once childhood friends. It goes to show the tremendous power of the propagandist pen.
